2 July

So it would appear that Dashboard relies on a modified WebCore that allows HTML+JS widgets to access the computer’s data and programs, so that for instance they can control iTunes or display the calendar and address book contents.

I know that Apple’s programmers aren’t too stupid, but, still… isn’t that precisely the kind of added functionality that caused Microsoft to make Internet Explorer the worst collection of security holes ever released?

5 July

6 July

Watch out for the technical point. It’s not even about the web, but Windows programming, so you can just skip it. Besides, considering my current sleeping cycles, I’m dead now, so this post will be particularly bad. And what I’m writing about isn’t even new anymore. That’s how interesting it is.

So, if you’re nosy, you can still click the icon and download the program, which isn’t of much use — it’s just a technical demo — but, well, I like to brag with my software. (Hoping it’ll work on other computers than mine. And, of course, since that’s the post’s topic, you need the .NET runtime.)

11 July

13 July

And now is the time to release the first useful program since I got into the .NET SDK: GarooSync 0.1.

I have been wanting an FTP utility like this one for a long time, and it was becoming an emergency now that I’m working on a eZ publish project, involving lots of subdirectories everywhere.

Here’s the idea: I have on my hard drive local copies of my websites, corresponding to FTP-accessible distant directories — I’d expect any serious webmaster to have this setup, as I don’t see any other reasonable way to work. With a normal FTP client, when I edit a file I have to launch the FTP client, browse the local view to the directory my file is in, browse the distant view to the corresponding directory, and launch the upload. And that’s completely stupid, because any given file on my local setup will systematically go to the same distant spot, so it’s a huge waste of time and energy to have to wander around filesystems every time.

Hence GarooSync: once you’ve configured the correspondence between local and distant directories (for now you have to manually edit XML files, but there’ll be a configuration interface someday), all you have to do is launch “syncupload index.php” and the file is uploaded (caution: there’s no confirmation request; a future version will check last modification times).

I haven’t looked into adding options to the Windows explorer context menu yet, so you’ll have to manage this on your own: first you can add SyncUpload and/or SyncDownload to your “Send to” menu by creating shortcuts in the SendTo subdirectory in Documents and Settings; second, you can add them to your text editor’s tools menu. In Code-Genie (which I won’t link to because the latest version isn’t free anymore), after adding a line to the configuration file, I can now upload a file I just modified simply by pressing Ctrl+1. Editing code, pressing a shortcut, the file is up. I hope that, if you’re a webmaster, you realize how handy this is.

Thanks to Jaimon Mathew for the FTP library (this one seems to work: I updated everything on garoo.net/software with it).

14 July

Nokia Lifeblog beta. Testing will be quick: it’s perfectly usable without a phone, but it only works in full-screen mode. It’s not only slightly annoying when you have a triple-head display, but also prevents from drag-and-dropping pictures onto the timeline, which would obviously be the most natural way of using it. I sent a bug report, but I don’t know whether they’ll get it: their form doesn’t work.

Conclusion: I’ll add a Lifeblog clone to the list of software I want to make. Timeline, drag-and-drop support for pictures (or any other file) à la Hello, one-click HTML page publishing, and you’re done.